


Paperwork

by Princip1914



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (and the bookshop and the bentley), (but only if you squint), Anathema is the real MVP, Bloodplay, Discorporated Aziraphale (Good Omens), Discorporation (Good Omens), Divinity Kink, F/F, F/M, Good Omens as directed by Bryan Fuller, Knifeplay, Making an Effort (Good Omens), Masochism, Other, Possessive Crowley (Good Omens), discorporated Crowley, discorporating through the ages, discorporating while pining, discorporation as intimacy, intentional discorporation, the place for edged weapons is in the bedroom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:28:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24243556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princip1914/pseuds/Princip1914
Summary: “Look, it’s ridiculous to go around discorporating one another!” Crowley sloshed mead from his tankard. “It’ll jus’ sl...slow us both down.”“Crowley,” Aziraphale suddenly had a brilliant idea, helped along by early experiments in fermenting honey. “Have you ever actually been discorporated?”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 58
Kudos: 251
Collections: Name That Author Round 3: After Dark





	Paperwork

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is my first fic that's required archive warnings. Is that some kind of milestone? 
> 
> The discorporation is probably a metaphor, but also, it’s not. There’s a lot of blood and death (although none of it permanent) in this story. Mind the tags.

Aziraphale gasped and squirmed on the Babylonian sentry’s thick lance. He only barely had time to wonder at the sheer amount of fluid a human body was capable of producing, to catch the first part of a half formed thought-- _this is nothing like I expected_ \--before he landed with a crash in his office chair in Heaven, the force of his entry sending him spinning into the neighboring cubicle. 

“Watch it,” whispered a cherub, gesturing towards a sign that read: MIRACLE IN PROGRESS, DO NOT DISTURB. 

“Terribly sorry.” Aziraphale scooted back to his own desk. The calendar pinned to the wall was still on the first month. There was a piece of manna in one of the desk drawers. Aziraphale bit into it, but it had gone stale. He chewed slowly as the second part of the interrupted thought filtered in. _I have to do that again_. 

***

Crowley wanted An Arrangement. Crowley was a complication. 

“Look, it’s ridiculous to go around discorporating one another!” Crowley sloshed mead from his tankard. “It’ll jus’ sl...slow us both down.” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale suddenly had a brilliant idea, helped along by early experiments in fermenting honey. “Have you ever actually been discorporated?” 

“Er...no? But that’s beside th’ poin--” 

Aziraphale took the butter knife from the table and stabbed Crowley in the throat. 

***

The rain was pouring all around them, soaking a field of heather that would one day become a rather famous golf course in Scotland. The divine had just made a deal with the damned. The damned had just entered into a pact with the divine. Aziraphale’s palm still sizzled from their handshake. 

All of Aziraphale’s thousand eyes were focused on the long knife in Crowley’s hand, clutched against the green folds of her dress. Aziraphale wondered what it would feel like against his skin. What it would feel like inside of him. Something new and hot rose up inside him. Was this what humans called anticipation? 

“Where’s your weapon,” Crowley asked, her eyes yellow all the way to the corners. Her narrow bosom heaved with the human need for air. Was she anticipating too? 

Aziraphale drew a two-handed claymore from over his shoulder. Unprompted, Crowley knelt in the mud in front of him, swept her long red hair over her shoulder to bare her neck. 

“It will be over quickly like that,” Aziraphale murmured. 

“I want it this way.” Crowley drew in a sharp breath. “It’s how I imagined it.” 

The new roiling _thing_ behind Aziraphale’s ribs intensified. Crowley had thought of them together like this. She had wanted it.

“I imagined it too,” he confessed. 

“Like this?” 

“No, I imagined us closer.”

Crowley sighed down at the muddy earth. “Next time.” 

Aziraphale had known there would be a next time. They had only just shaken on it. But still, to hear the promise in Crowley’s hushed voice sent that same new heat twisting through his belly in advance of Crowley’s knife, a premonition, perhaps, of her murderous hand. 

Will you still have the strength to...? After I...?” 

“Yes.” 

“Ok, I’m…” Aziraphale tightened his grip on the hilt, took a deep, last breath. “I’m going to do it now. If that’s alright.” 

“ _Please_ ” Crowley hissed, barely audible above the sheeting rain. 

***

Once, Aziraphale had had a flaming sword. Now, he had a knife. It had been a gift, but there was nothing--no inlaid snake on the wooden handle, no initial on the sleek blade--to identify the giver. 

It had come in a plain box to Aziraphale’s rooms in Christ Church college, along with a note, scrawled in a hand Aziraphale would recognize anywhere. _You wanted it closer_. The box was clearly meant to hold two blades, but one was missing. Aziraphale flipped the note over. On the back, in the same angular hand, was written: _One of a matched set. I have the other._ The word “have” had been written above a different word that Crowley had crossed out so forcefully the parchment had torn. 

When Aziraphale took the knife out of the box he saw that it had already been used. A thin, rust red line had dried along its sharp edge. He pressed his own thumb to that same edge, until pain bloomed and a fresh smear of red dripped onto the blade. Aziraphale held his breath as his blood mingled with Crowley’s, as the smokey burn of hellfire crawled up his arm, a distant echo of something more. _One of a matched set. I am the other._

Aziraphale burned the note in the grate until nothing was left of it but ash, and told himself he was only being cautious. But it did not feel like caution. It felt like an admission.

***

“We’ve got to stop,” Aziraphale panted. “They’re going to find out.” 

“What’s to find out?” Crowley asked, cutting a feather light circle from one of Aziraphale’s hips to the other. Aziraphale whimpered into the bright shock of pain that trailed in the wake of Crowley’s blade. “We’re just doing our jobs.” 

“Do you think it’s like this for humans?” Aziraphale asked. Aziraphale’s hands were already bloody. The bedspread was bloody beneath them. 

“Nah.” The sharp point of Crowley’s dagger pressed against Aziraphale’s sternum. Aziraphale sighed in anticipation. “It’s like alcohol. Humans drink a little and immediately they’re drunk. We _can_ get drunk, it just takes…” Aziraphale’s flesh parted in a shallow line beneath the blade as Crowley dragged it down to his navel. “...more,” Crowley finished softly. 

Aziraphale held his own knife against the tender inside of Crowley’s bicep, pressed down, until the blade ran red and the smell of iron and salt filled the air and Crowley hissed and shuddered beside him. 

“Are you sure this is all right though?” He traced a deep line down the inside of Crowley’s arm to the edge of his palm. Crowley let out a low, choked moan. “I just worry that head office might not approve.” 

“What’sssss not to approve of?” Crowley always struggled with his s sounds towards the end. Aziraphale told himself he did not find it endearing. “You’re dissscorporating the enemy. You got a co...co...mend thingy for it jussst lassst month.”

“Yes, well, but I’m also letting you--” Aziraphale gasped. Crowley’s blade had darted, sudden and deep, beneath his ribs. “Dis..discorporate...me.” he finished on a sigh.

Both knives clattered to the floor. Crowley’s bare hands were on him, long fingers probing at the deep cut in his side. There was something exquisite about the way they hovered over the tender pain of the wound, the way they slithered, snakelike, and curled inside it. 

***

After crepes, they walked quickly to Aziraphale’s apartment overlooking the Seine. 

“What are you going to put on the paperwork?” Crowley asked, crowding against him. 

Aziraphale swallowed. “Guillotine. You?” 

“Eh, ‘run over by a horse’ probably.” 

“You always put ‘run over by a horse’!” 

“They never check. Count of three?” A familiar knife glinted in Crowley’s hand, like the return of a dear friend. Aziraphale looked at it with a sudden but not unexpected twist of longing, reached for his own. 

***

London was burning outside, but inside the bookshop Crowley was safe, just a little singed. So too, was a bag of books, nearly forgotten on the desk next to a pair of somewhat dusty sunglasses. 

“Oh, your feet!” Aziraphale fretted as Crowley settled himself on the couch. “They must hurt so terribly!” 

“They’re fine angel.” 

Aziraphale knelt between Crowley’s spread thighs anyway, lifted first one, then the other, fine-boned ankle into his lap. The soles of Crowley’s feet were an angry red. Tenatatively, Aziraphale pressed against them with his thumbs. Above him Crowley hissed in agony. 

Aziraphale drew back. 

“Don’t stop,” Crowley gasped. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, digging his hands in. “For saving me.” 

“Don’t thank me,” Crowley panted. “Don’t ever thank me. And I didn’t save you from anything. I’m still going to...” he stuttered, gasped, cut himself off. “...what I mean is...there will still be paperwork.”

“It’s worth the paperwork,” Aziraphale said, thinking of the brush of Crowley’s fingers exchanging a heavy bag of books, those same clever fingers, slippery with blood, sliding inside an opening Crowley had made for himself in Aziraphale’s body. “It’s always worth the paperwork, with you.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley’s voice was tight, with the pain of Aziraphale’s holy hands on his burned feet, with some other emotion raw and trembling underneath it. “It’s worth it for me too.” 

Aziraphale looked up into Crowley’s golden eyes, raked his nails, sparking with the energy of the Divine, down the soles of Crowley’s ruined feet. “I don’t want any hand but yours. I haven’t for a thousand years.” 

Crowley moaned above him, a high, choked sound. “I wouldn’t let...” he panted. “Wouldn’t let anyone else get a hand on you. Haven’t for a thousand years.” 

“Crowley, I need--” 

“Yes.” 

Aziraphale knelt over Crowley on the sofa, fumbling at the buttons of his shirt. Crowley’s skin was cool, belly taut and trembling. “One.”

"Two,” Crowley’s breath ghosted against Aziraphale’s cheek. A hardness, sharp and welcome, pressed between them. Aziraphale sighed into it, pressed back with his own. 

“Three,” White hot agony seared through Aziraphale. It was better than being shot. Better than decapitation. Crowley’s blood drenched him, warm and slick, mingled with his own. He gasped with the ecstacy of it. They gasped with it together. 

***

“Should I say thank you?” Crowley asked, mild as anything, still cradling the thermos in his hands. 

Aziraphale swallowed. “Better not.” 

“I could...?” Crowley trailed off, reached to pull an object shining and familiar from the glove compartment of the Bentley. 

Aziraphale sucked in a breath. “No, I--” he swallowed again. “I’m afraid I can’t. I can’t bear it right now. Not after--” 

Aziraphale didn’t know how he had planned to end that sentence. Not after giving you the means to end it all permanently? Not after the last time, when I couldn’t help myself and said it out loud, _for a thousand years_? When you said it back to me, _for a thousand years_? 

Crowley sat across from him, inscrutable in the neon light of Soho, elegant fingers stroking an object that could, for the first time in their long acquaintance, truly bring about his destruction. Aziraphale had denied him tonight, but gazing on the soft, vulnerable skin of the demon’s neck, his dear crooked nose, he felt as though Crowley had slipped his knife in anyway. “Oh, don’t look so disappointed,” Aziraphale said. “Perhaps one day we could...I don’t know. Go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.” 

Later that night, as he examined his reflection in the sliver of an ancient blade, Aziraphale thought that whatever Crowley had been expecting--a quick and messy discorporation, an outright rejection--it had not been what Aziraphale had given him. He had not been expecting a promise. 

***

Aziraphale cried through the entire ceremony. Crowley, a dear dark shadow next to him, miracled him a handkerchief that smelled only slightly of brimstone and stroked his knee furtively, as though he still weren’t quite sure he was allowed. 

Later, at the reception, they drifted into Anathema’s orbit to offer congratulations. She was radiant in her white dress, Newt extraordinarily happy and dumbstruck next to her. 

“How have you two been?” Anathema asked. 

“Retirement is wonderful,” Aziraphale said over the happy noise of the party. “The only shame is we had to stop discorporating each other. We’d never get new bodies now.” 

“Discorporating…as in, murder?” Anathema’s mouth was a round, shocked O.

“Well, I suppose,” Aziraphale blushed. “But it’s nice actually. We feel all tingly afterwards.” 

Anathema started laughing and didn’t stop for a minute straight. Eventually, she stopped and wiped at her eyes. “Have you two ever had sex?” 

“Why would we want to do that?” Crowley asked suspiciously.

“Well,” Anathema said, “let me tell you about something called the _little_ death.” 

***

In the coat closet of a modestly priced wedding venue by the sea, two six thousand year old beings were trying something new together. 

“Do you know what it’s supposed to look like?” Crowley asked. His eyes were pale lamps in the close, musty darkness. 

“I’ve never really paid that much attention,” Aziraphale muttered. “I know Gabriel has one--”

“Gabriel’s a dolt, I don’t want anything he thinks is good--” 

“Just, hang on.” Aziraphale closed his eyes and thought of Greek statues and Renaissance art until a subtle but significant change made itself known between his thighs. “What do you think?” he asked Crowley anxiously, peeling away his trousers. They peered down at it together. 

Crowley licked his lips. “Looks like you put in substantial Effort.”

“Oh, no I wouldn’t say that,” Aziraphale demurred. “It wasn’t that hard at all really.” 

“Doesn’t seem that way to me.” 

Aziraphale was astonished not only to see, but also _feel_ , it grow and stiffen under the prickling heat of Crowley’s stare. “Oh my,” he said faintly. “Will you make one too?”

“Already on it,” Crowley whispered. And now that he looked, Aziraphale could see a new sort of outline pushing on the placard of Crowley’s trousers. Incongruously, his mouth watered.

“Take it out,” Aziraphale said. “I want to see it properly.” 

Crowley’s hands fumbled at the zip, trembling ever so minutely. 

Aziraphale was reaching out a hand before he realized he hadn’t even asked for permission. “May I touch it?” 

“Of course, can I--?” Crowley’s hand hovered. Aziraphale’s Effort made a valiant upwards surge for closer proximity. 

“ _Please_ ” Aziraphale said, closing his own hand around Crowley. 

“Wow, no w-wonder humans do thissss all the time.”

“Oh, that’s--”

“Yeah, angel--” 

“So very good--”

Aziraphale did something experimental with grip and speed. Crowley made a sound that was not quite, but very similar to, a hiss of pain and redoubled his own efforts. 

“That feels wonderful,” Aziraphale gasped, “only could you?--” 

But Crowley, dear old enemy that he was, was already reaching into the air, pulling out a familiar knife with a worn wood handle, steel slim from years of sharpening, and holding it to Aziraphale’s throat. 

“Like thissss?” he asked, tightening his hand around Aziraphale’s flesh, pushing the blade ever so gently against Aziraphale’s skin. 

_Yes_ , Aziraphale wanted to say, but at the first press of the edge against his throat, he experienced something very wonderful and very human, which temporarily rendered him speechless. Like countless previous deaths, the end result was something sticky, warm, and wet, only this time Aziraphale’s spirit stuck around to see the mess glisten over Crowley’s hands. 

Crowley made a noise like surprise deep in his throat and the quantity of sticky wetness between them doubled, dripping over Aziraphale’s fingers as well. 

“Well,” Crowley said eventually into the humid darkness between them. “That was a _thing_.”

“Indeed,” Aziraphale murmured.

“I’ll have to be more careful next time.” Aziraphale’s stomach flipped over at the causal way Crowley said _next time_. “I didn’t mean to cut you.” 

Aziraphale raised his hand to his throat. He had hardly felt the bite of the knife, yet his fingers came away bloody. 

“Don’t worry, it’s shallow.” Crowley pressed the half moon of his thumbnail lightly against the wound on Aziraphale’s throat, and oh, that was a sensation to be wrapped up in waxed paper like the last half of a decadent dessert, taken out and savored for years to come. 

“It will close up again soon enough I suspect,” Aziraphale said half hoping Crowley could not hear the regret in his voice, half hoping that he could. “These bodies never show scars for long.” 

“Probably right...” Crowley pressed in a little harder with his thumbnail. Aziraphale leaned his head back, baring his throat to the burn of it. Crowley’s eyes were yellow all the way to their edges. “...unfortunately,” Crowley finished. Aziraphale’s Effort twitched weakly against his thigh. Crowley’s Effort stiffened in sympathy. 

Crowley eyed them both with undisguised interest. “You know, I’m beginning to see some benefits of doing it like this,” he said. 

“There might be a physiological limit,” Aziraphale tried to point out, but Crowley was already dropping down to his knees on the closet floor, looking up at Aziraphale from half lidded eyes. 

“Only one way to know for sure.” 

***

Rather more than seven minutes and a variety anatomical configurations later, two supernatural entities were attempting to look like they hadn’t spent the better part of a friends’ wedding in a closet that could only metaphorically be described as “Heaven” (Heaven being cold, sterile, and nowhere near as full of interesting new sensations). 

Crowley’s hands were gentle as he pulled Aziraphale close and smoothed the wrinkles in his shirt before working the buttons carefully back into their holes. Aziraphale’s hands skimmed Crowley’s narrow hips, tucking in his dear black henley, buckling the belt fashioned like a snake. In a thousand years of taking one another apart, this was the first time, Aziraphale realized, that they had put each other back together again when it was over. Crowley’s knuckles brushed the sensitive skin of Aziraphale’s neck as he re-tied Aziraphale’s bow tie with trembling, tender hands. Aziraphale did not know how he had gone without this for so long. He did not know how they both had gone without it. 

“There,” Crowley said, a bit breathless, plucking at the sides of the tie to make them symmetrical. The tie lay just tight enough over the shallow cut on Aziraphale’s neck that he could feel the incandescent echo of pain when he swallowed. They both reached at the same time to press against the wound through the cloth. Their hands tangled. 

“I love you,” Crowley said in a panicked sort of rush. Aziraphale thought of bloody fingers and sharp knives and _a matched set_ and _it’s worth it, with you_ and _wouldn’t let anyone else get a hand on you_.

“I like it every way you say it,” Aziraphale murmured. “I love you too. I have done for--” 

“A thousand years, I know.” 

“Well, then,” Aziraphale’s hand had migrated to Crowley’s hip where he knew there was another shallow cut, one of a half dozen marks they had left on each other's precious and irreplaceable bodies. The first half dozen, Aziraphale, hoped, of many. “Shall we go have cake?” 

Crowley fed Aziraphale little bites of desert off his own plate with an impish grin on his face. Crowley's lips were very red, his hair was even more mussed than normal, and he looked extraordinarily pleased with himself. It was a good look on him, Aziraphale thought. 

Anathema was making the rounds again, and lingered at their table. “Worked it out, have you?” she asked, not unkindly. 

Aziraphale coughed on a mouthful of cake. Crowley turned red next to him. 

“How did--?” Crowley started.

“You were missing for most of the dancing. Also, your shirt is on backwards.” Crowley’s hands flew to his neckline. He pulled at his shirt to look for the tag, revealing an assortment of marks in the shape of Aziraphale’s mouth. 

“I take it you enjoyed it then?” Anathema asked, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Better than murder-suicide?” 

“It has some advantages,” Aziraphale said mildly, pressing Crowley’s knee under the table with his own. “Certainly fewer forms to fill out.” 

Next to him, Crowley suddenly let out a groan and put his head in his hands. 

“What is it?” Aziraphale asked, alarmed. 

“Gosh,” Crowley moaned. “Aziraphale, just think of all the paperwork we could have saved.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the other half of an exploration into the confusing similarities between intimacy and discorporation (for the fluffier alternate version of this fic, see: [ Olive Branch ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24177340)) 
> 
> This fic came from a 500 word ficlet in a challenge on the GO Events server for the prompt: “this better not awaken anything in me.” Turns out, when you write something that is 1.5k long and cut out ⅔ of it in order to make it 500 words, it is a lot harder than you might think to expand it again. I hope that I was able to keep some of the tone of the original short version in this director’s cut edition. If you liked it, let me know! 
> 
> [Come stop by on tumblr](https://princip1914.tumblr.com) for more cursed (™) content.


End file.
